Digital Inception

This is an observation about human rationality as much as it is about the epistemic conditions generated by life in what Jay Bolter has aptly termed the digital plentitude and which I usually call the Database. We are not as narrowly rational in our thinking as many would like to believe. Which is why conventional “solutions” to the problems associ... See more

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” Tolkien has Bilbo caution Frodo, “You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”We might well say that it’s a dangerous business going online. You step into the Database, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing wh... See more

It recently occurred to me that Inception was really a movie about how easy digital media has made it for a stray thought coming out of nowhere to get lodged in our minds with potentially destructive consequences.